sickbay init

Initialize the .sickbay/ directory in your project. This sets up the scaffolding needed for trend tracking, branch diffing, and badge generation.

Usage

sickbay init [options]

Options

Flag	Description	Default
-p, --path <path>	Project path to initialize	Current working directory

What It Creates

Running sickbay init creates the following structure:

.sickbay/
  .gitignore        # Ignores report artifacts from version control
  baseline.json     # Initial health scan snapshot
  history.json      # Array of scan results for trend tracking

The .gitignore inside .sickbay/ ensures that generated report files are not accidentally committed to your repository while keeping the directory itself tracked.

Examples

Initialize current directory

sickbay init

Initialize a specific project

sickbay init --path ~/my-project

What It Enables

After initialization, several features become available:

Feature	Command	Requires Init
Trend tracking	sickbay trend	Yes — reads from history.json
Branch diff	sickbay diff <branch>	Yes — compares against .sickbay/last-report.json
Badge generation	sickbay badge	No, but uses last-report.json to avoid re-scanning
Auto-save	sickbay (scan)	Directory must exist

Monorepo Usage

In a monorepo, run sickbay init at the workspace root. The .sickbay/ directory is created at the root level and stores aggregated data for all packages.

sickbay init --path ~/my-monorepo

Tips

• Run sickbay init once when you first adopt Sickbay in a project
• The baseline.json captures your starting health score so you can measure improvement over time
• Add .sickbay/ to your project's root .gitignore if you do not want to track the directory at all